Intel's high end X79 chipset is going to sell for a saucy $73 when it becomes available in November. Intel's Z68 remains the runner up chipset with $48 while the old X58 is out of the focus.

Since X58 stayed in operation much longer than many expected Intel has decided that X79 is a better codename considering that Sandy Bridge E successor probably won’t ship before earliest Q4 2012.

The $73 price tag is not exactly cheap for a USB 2.0 only chipset but Intel is winning to give you 10 SATA 6Gb/s ports, PCIe 2.0 for graphics and PCIe 3.0 dedicated for storage. Not what top gamers had in mind but what can you do. Naturally the chipset supports 1Gbit internet as well as an SCSI controller.

If you look at the spec deep enough, you will realize that this is a workstation chipset and CPU that will just get launched as an extreme PC part that likes overclocking.

Even with the quad-core Core i7 3820 that works at 3.6GHz you can get to 3.9GHz with turbo and with top Core i7 extreme 3960X a six core 3.3GHz clocked Sandy Bridge E CPU, you can get to 3.9GHz with turbo, and this probably means some serious performance.

Asus has announced yet another motherboard that will bear the Gen3 mark, or simply put feature support for PCI-Express 3.0, the Z68-based micro-ATX ROG Maximus IV Gene-Z/Gen3.

As noted, the new micro-ATX motherboard is based on Intel's Z68 chipset, supports LGA1155 processors including the upcoming Ivy Bridge ones, has two PCI-Express x16 3.0 ports with support for SLI, CrossfireX and Virtu, one PCI-Express x4 2.0 port, and comes with four DDR3-2200 memory slots.

The rest of the features include four SATA 3.0Gpbs and two SATA 6.0Gbps ports, two eSATA ports, four USB 3.0 ports (two via header), bunch of USB 2.0 ports, HDMI output, Gigabit Ethernet, integrated Supereme X-Fi 2audio and all the Republic of Gamers and overclocking friendly goodies like ROG Web Storage, ROG Connect, Extreme Engine Digi+, Mem TweakIt, Ai Charger+ and much more.

Unfortunately, the price or the actual release date haven't been announced but we'll surely keep our eye out for this one.

Biostar has rolled out yet another Z68-based LGA1155 motherboard that will be a part of its T-Series, the TZ68K+.

The new TZ68K+ motherboard supports Intel's 32nm Sandy Bridge CPUs and comes with four DDR3-2000 memory slots, two PCI-Express x16 slots (x16, x16+x4) with support for CrossfireX and Lucid's Virtu, has four DDR3 memory slots with support for up to 16GB of DDR3-2200 memory, has two SATA 6Gbps and four SATA 3Gbps ports, two plain PCI and one PCI-Express x1 slot.

It also features Gigabit LAN, 6-channel audio, two USB 3.0 and five USB 2.0 ports, as well as DVI, D-Sub and HDMI outputs on a rather lacking I/O panel for a full ATX motherboard. The rest of the features include Biostar's Charger Booster for accelerated charging of devices and gadgets, Rapid Switch and Rapid Debug, as well as Bio Remote 2 tech that provides remote access from an Android or iOS based device.

Sapphire is definitely better known for its AMD related products, whether they're motherboards or computer graphics. Well since the market is transforming, Sapphire wants to get some more motherboard action and this time around it is ready to announce its Sapphire Pure Platinum Z68 ATX motherboard.

The board is aimed at second generation Core i3, i5 and i7 Sandy Bridge CPUs and uses LGA 1155 socket. It has a dual channel memory socket capable of 16GB DDR3 memory and even 32GB (4x8GB) is possible once these modules show up on market.

The board has two USB 3.0, found USB 2.0 ports plus 8 on headers as well as Gigabit LAN, Bluetooth connectivity. It has SATA 3G ports and two SATA 6G ports, as well as two more on headers. It supports Intel Rapid technology as well as RAID 1,0,5 and 10.

The board comes with four video options VGA, DVI, HDMI and Display port of which any pair can be used simultaneously. It also supports the latest 3D capable HDMI 1.4a for both video and audio. It comes with a rear panel with 8 channel HD 7.1 audio as well as SPDIF support.

There are two PCIe 16X graphics slots that will let you use two cards in Crossfire as well sa Lucid Virtu software that can mix and match graphcs cards and let your Radeon external card combine its power with Intel integrated one and give you a frame or few more. The board comes with three standard PCI slots if you use it for anything today. Sapphire belives that the boards are meant for 3D gamers that like to plug external graphics cards and use them for serious gaming, hopefully with another Sapphire’s product.

It’s a good overclocking board with 6+2 phase power and it comes with mainboard Trixx overclocking. The board also comes with two bios', which allows for experiments and updates a bit easier than before. Don’t forget the three phase memory power that will help you overclock this part of the system.

The board is black but it has high quality gold plated USB and LAN connectors. The Sapphire Pure Platinum Z68 is in production now, and will be available through Sapphire's usual partners and retailers soon.

Following the release of ASRock's first Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen3 and MSI's latest Z68A-GD80 (G3) motherboard, it now appears that Asrock plans quite a push with four new motherboard models that will also feature PCI-Express 3.0 support.

All four motherboards will be based on Intel's LGA1155 socket and will feature either a single or two PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots. The motherboard will be known as the Z68 Extreme7 Gen3, Z68 Extreme 4 Gen3, Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 and P67 Extreme4 Gen3. The Z68 Extreme7 Gen3 is the only motherboard in this batch that comes with a single PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slot while the rest will have two.

These four new motherboards are a high-end offer from Asrock and feature multiple PCI-Express slots with support for both SLI and CrossfireX, up to six SATA3 slots, USB 3.0 ports, dual or single gigabit LAN and much more.

In case you are wondering, the PCI-Express 3.0 offers up to 8.0GT/s of raw bit rate with 8Gbps of interconnect bandwidth and around 32GB/s of total bandwidth for x16 lane. These specs roughly doubles the speed of a previous PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots.

Although it has already been rumoured for a May launch, we managed to confirm that Intel's Z68 LGA 1155 chipset with Sandy Bridge support will launch on May 11.

As noted, the Intel Z68 Express chipset supports Intel's Sandy Bridge processors and will be marketed as a "performance overclocking chipset" that has support for CPU, memory, as well as processor graphics overclocking support. The Z68 can easily be considered as the tweaked P67 as it brings display outputs and RST SSD caching, while the rest of the specs are pretty much on par with the P67.

Other thing that also seperates the Z68 from the P67 is LucidLogix's Virtu graphics switching software that will be supported by some, if not all, MB manufacturers, but honestly don't get you hopes up as Lucid's solutions had history of falling short when it comes to support, and there were some rumors that this one is no exception either, but we'll hold on with info until we manage to get more details regarding it in the next few days.

The current schedule puts the launch of the Z68 on May 11th which makes more sense than the previously rumoured May 8th (Sunday) launch date. The good thing about Z68 is that it price shouldn't be that much higher when compared to the P67.

More info regarding the Z68 should appear as we draw closer to the launch day.

Sapphire has been known for their graphics cards and although the company already did a lot of motherboards based on AMD's chipsets, it looks like they are getting quite serious now. The P67 that was showcased was just a begining as Sapphire also has the mini-ITX H67 as well as the new Z68 in the works.

The upcoming H67 LGA 1155 motherboard still doesn't have an official name but we do have some pictures and details. Bear in mind that all Sapphire motherboards have a unique design due to the fact that Sapphire does these things on their own rather than following Intel's reference designs. Thus, you can expect that these will be quite good.

The specs are pretty standard as you have a 4-phase VRM for the CPU and features a total of four SATA ports, two being a SATA 6Gbps ones. It also comes with two USB 3.0 ports, four USB 2.0 ones, Ethernet, Bluetooth, 7.1-channel audio and D-Sub, DVI, HDMI and Display Port outputs, something that you don't see every day. The one thing that seperates the Sapphire H67 from the rest of the crowd is the addition of the LucidLogix chip that will allow GPU switching between the Sandy Bridge CPU and its graphics and the dedicated graphics card.

Although we don't have many details regarding it, it is nice to know that Sapphire is also working on the Z68 based motherboard as well. Again, this one will be equipped with Lucid's Hydra chip. As far as the specs go, it features three PCI-Express slots, three PCI slots, a total of four SATA 6Gbps and four SATA 3Gbps ports, special Sapphire BlackDiamond Chokes, two USB 3.0 ports, four USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth, 7.1-channel audio, dual BIOS, debug post display, and of course, DisplayPort, HDMI, DVI and D-Sub outputs.

Of course, the Z68 is still in its early stage but we are sure that we'll see it launched at Computex, next to that mini-ITX H67 motherboard.

Asus and other motherboard manufacturers used Cebit to showcase their latest motherboards including some based on the Z68 chipset.

According to what we have been told around the show, Z68 based motherboards should show up in the second quarter and should phase out the P67 based motherboards as you practically get the same thing with support for graphics, or to be precise, DVI and HDMI outputs on the motherboard I/O.

There is not much to see as the motherboards based on this chipset look pretty much identical to the P67 motherboards except for the mentioned video outputs.